I don't know how many of you have been following the New Horizons mission... · 3:21pm Jul 14th, 2015
... but I have. And the stuff it's sending back is super exciting.
For those who weren't following it, New Horizons is a probe launched by NASA to do a close flyby of Pluto. And I do mean close. Its periapsis, or closest approach, is 12,000 km, which is about a third of the height of the satellites we use for GPS navigation. So for the last month, I've been combing through both the NASA/JPL mission logs and r/space for the pictures it's been sending back. What makes it so exciting is that as of a couple weeks ago, every picture it sent back was the best picture of Pluto humanity had ever taken. Even the fact that we sent a probe there in the first place is mind blowing, considering Pluto's about 7.5 billion kilometres away.
Keep in mind that, until New Horizons, the best picture of Pluto we had was this:
Not that exciting.
New Horizons sent these image back a few hours ago.
On the left of the third image is Pluto's moon Charon (relative size is to scale, distance is not). Charon is less interesting than Pluto in terms of surface features, although that's likely because surface features show up way better on Pluto's mottled landscape than they do on Charon's uniform grey.
Speaking of features on Pluto, I'm noticing that the surface is really textured. Like, heavily so, especially in the first image. I'm also noticing a relative lack of impact craters, compared to other bodies in the solar system. Take a look at Mercury for comparison. As the number of impact craters is a strong indicator of surface age, there's some interesting implications. For instance, the lighter area in the center of the second picture has no visible craters (at least not by my examination). So that vast swath of land is far younger than the rest of it.
Then, of course, there's the degree of contrast in the surface colouration, which is nothing short of shocking. The only body in the Solar system with similar levels of contrast are Earth and Jupiter's moon Io, the latter of which gets its striking colouration from ludicrous levels of volcanism. Every other non-planet body in the solar system is pretty much... well, grey. They look like Charon, usually. But that makes Pluto's colouration even more striking, considering it and Charon form a binary system.
There's a lot of other cool stuff happening that I could go on for pages about, but I'll cut myself off there. If you want to see more of the pictures New Horizons will be sending back over the next week or so, check out r/space, which has been filled with the stuff lately, as well as updates about Ceres and that comet the ESA landed on a few months back.
Space is such a weird and wonderful place, full of unexpected surprises. And, quite frankly, it's nice to know that the stars in the night sky are just a little bit closer.
All we have to is wait and hope. Hope we get the data from New Horizon. I can't wait tell tonight! Plus all the new tech used in the probe, and the gravity assistance from Jupiter just makes this mission even more exciting. Of corse I'm just a space nerd...
I just love the fact that it's red. :D